No, I will not play these games. But I will sure fiddle with them to no end.

You know, most of the "real programmers" started their career back in 80s and 90s not because of a high-paying salary or office benefits such as coffee machines and bean bags. They started by hacking together their computer and then moving on to hacking their games (because there were none). They were driven by passion. I didn't get to experience that, I got my own PC in 2006 when I was still a kid, but the passion and fascination was there. Fiddling with MS Paint, changing wallpapers and screensavers — it felt like the world of infinite possibilities. Source: habr.com (and most likely Microsoft?) But the turning point for me really was computer games, or more specifically — computer game modifications (mods). Back in the times modding was almost a separate sub-culture, it was a philosophy. In fact, games like Doom and later Quake thrived because of this. Quake in particular laid the groundworks for a whole new paradigm that finds its resonance to the present day in games like…